Cageside Community Wrestler Rankings, Season 12 wrap-up and Season 13 start

Everybody who comes to Cageside Seats has an opinion about what's going on in pro wrestling — Wrestler Rankings are where YOU let us know YOURS.

Cast a vote in the comments. Give us the five performers you think entertained or impressed the most in the last week, and feel free to talk about why.

We also have the outcome of last week's voting, the results of which make up our annual competition for the Cageside Cup, given to our Performer of the Year.

This week, we’re starting our 13th(!) year and voting on nationally televised and internet streaming pro wrestling shows that took place April 8-13, 2024 — Raw, NXT, Powerrr, Dynamite, Rampage, Impact, Fusion, ROH on HonorClub, SmackDown, Level Up, NJPW Windy City Riot, and everything else I’m no doubt forgetting.

But first, here’s the outcome of last week’s voting, and how those results gave us our final Cageside Cup Rankings.

Story completed...

You don’t really need bullet points for these, just check the results of WrestleMania XL (and Supercard of Honor)...

The CCWR: 2023-24, WrestleMania Week

1. Cody Rhodes
2. Bayley
3. Damian Priest
4. Sami Zayn
5. Drew McIntyre
6. Mark Briscoe
7. R-Truth
8. (tie) Roman Reigns
8. (tie) Seth Rollins
10. Rhea Ripley

Points in our weekly Rankings determine the ongoing annual one — which will determine who wins the Cageside Cup. Full details on rules and scoring HERE.

In past years I’ve done a whole post on these results, but I just couldn’t carve out the time over the past week. In fact, I considered calling the whole thing a wrap... 12 years is a heck of a run, and while I think our Cup winner had a great past 12 months, he is the only person to come in first for the year without winning a week.

Which makes me wonder if this weekly ranked choice voting system tells us much (or as much as it used to) about what folks are enjoying from their pro wrestling over the course of a year. Some of the business’ biggest stars aren’t around every week, and some who are still only wrestle occasionally. Time off for talent seems to have thankfully become more acceptable. And that’s without even getting into the tribalism that led to us ditching an entire component of the Rankings a couple years back, and that caused us to stop using our PLE/PPV Star Ratings as anything other than discussion posts. It’s a lot of work. Maybe it’s not worth it?

I ended up deciding to give it at least another year. I have a sentimental attachment to the Rankings, as doing this as a FanPost is one of the things that led to my being fortunate enough to blog about rasslin’ full-time. I’m extremely appreciative of the 25-50 of you who cast ballots each week, and the thousands who click on the post every Sunday to see who they voted for. And aside from having to ditch the poll, this has remained a pretty positive place to just share what a sub-section of wrestling fans online are digging each week.

So let’s celebrate OC, pro wrestling, and each other... then do it all over again and see how it goes.

The Cageside Cup Performer of the Year — Final Standings for Season 12

For more information on how to do it again, click here, or feel free to ask a question in the comments. The main things you need to know are you have five spots on your ballot, you can’t put the same person in two of them, but you can split a single or multiple spots between multiple wrestlers. Now...

Let’s have those ballots! We’ll take it from there. See you back here in a week for the results, and another vote!